After my last post on the nanotubular nature of water vapor in plants I was thinking about both the nature of the hydrogen bond and the importance of illustrations in science. I knew there was something off with the ball-and-stick model of water in my illustration, but at first I didn’t have a good idea why I felt ill at ease with the image.
As a serendipitous event, I happened to travel to the Kiilto headquarters and factory in Lempäälä today for work. In there they have a ginormous model of a polyvinylacetate molecule:
At first, the model was so big that I found it hard to figure out what molecule it was. Then, my eye caught the two oxygen atoms apparently touching each other. Except they weren’t. They were separated, but from an angle you couldn’t see the gap.
I think it hit me immediately: this is what is happening in water vapor as well. While the water molecules don’t form a covalent bond, the hydrogen bond means that the molecules touch. Except this wasn’t exactly a new insight. I had just been focused on getting the model to look right that I forgot this basic principle.
So I went back to my Blender model of water vapor and expanded the spheres of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, so that they overlapped each other. Then I made sure that the neighboring molecules would touch, but not overlap, and I got this image:
While this is scientifically nothing new in comparison to the image of my previous post, I think its illustrative function is much stronger. It’s blatantly obvious to the viewer what is going on in the image. No more magical blue helices.
If nothing else, this image is cool!
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